bitcoin 2017 starts with a bang

hi all. havent written on bitcoin in awhile. its surging in value at the beginning of the year. this isnt the first year that happened. a set of favorable circumstances is propelling it. it is known that china regulation has a lot to do with its value and that there are a lot of chinese holders. it appears that chinese regulatory climate looks newly favorable.

another pattern is that whereever there is economic crisis in a currency, bitcoin surges.[f18] it seems that theres always some kind of monetary crisis somewhere in the world, and bitcoin capitalizes on it. there is that old saying by rahm emanuel, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. a bit machiavellian sounding, yet bitcoin seems to embody some of this. another way to see it is as a sort of ambulance that shows up at bloody scenes.

it looks like the media has gotten past the wild alarm and surprise over bitcoin. maybe part of the hype has subsided for the moment. theres less feverish reporting on it. but that does not fully capture its steady pace of innovation.

venezuela[b8] and brexit[b9] impacted bitcoin usage. india demonetization had big effect.[b16][b17] there are strongly opposing articles about govts adopting it (switzerland [b5][b6], japan [b3][b4][b11] ukraine [b10] vs rejecting it, in some cases the same govt, with some schizophrenic policy, noticeably russia [b1][b12][b14][b18] but elsewhere too ofc, eg china [b2]. there are major motions by the SEC wrt ETFs.[c10][c11]

the long stream of alarming articles about bitcoin scalability crisis have disappeared. havent been paying close enough attention, did it integrate some new scale technology? [e4]

the DAO fiasco was stunning, massive setback, one for the history books & shows how big the stakes are and how subtle/ delicate the issues of transactions/ security are,[c1][c4][c9] still dont quite understand it, but maybe not even as big a scale as the mtgox collapse.

more major noises by top world banks, Yellen/ Fed[d1][d3], sweden[d2], IMF.[d4]

the future looks rosy for bitcoin.[f] only half a decade ago, just a nearly scifi concept.

some say “anyone could have invented bitcoin”.[f20] think that is too casual a statement. that seems to me like saying anyone could have invented the light bulb, or figured out the theory of relativity.